The Subtle Grace of Gravity
by phollie
Summary: It's a day unlike any other when Alice decides that Jack Vessalius is beautiful. Jack/Alice. K.


I am in your fandom, hacking your pairings. BEWARE.

...nah. This is one of the more tame ones I'm into, honestly. There's a purity about Jack and Alice that perfectly balances out my hot, burning love-passion for Vincent/Ada. -shuffles feet-

Phollie doesn't own a scrap. The lyrics are Katie Melua's "I Cried For You", which I rec for ANY fan of Jack/Alice.

/

**.the subtle grace of gravity**

/

_[you're beautiful, so silently_

_it lies beneath a shade of blue_

_it struck me so violently_

_when i looked at you]_

/

It's a day unlike any other when Alice decides that Jack Vessalius is beautiful.

Then again, she supposes this is nothing out of the ordinary; the beauty part, that is. Alice has seen beautiful things plenty of times before, like the dove-white lace bridging the neckline of her dress, or the fashion in which birds fly, or the way the sun can dazzle and melt the almost-morning sky in shades of purple and pink only ever seen in dreams.

No - it's why she hasn't noticed until just now that truly baffles her, for here, in the womb of her bedroom cradled at the top of this slate-gray tower, it's the only thing Alice can be completely certain of; Jack Vessalius, her emerald knight, is beautiful.

She isn't sure why this moment, this decision, is so monumental in the first place. In the reflection of her mirror, she watches him, all sprawled legs and liquid smiles, as he braids magic into her hair with fingers as white and slender as piano keys. She's quite certain that she's merely dreamed up this glowing figure sitting behind her, because it all feels far too real to be genuine. It's all too warm, too unalloyed, too _wonderful_, and if there's ever been one thing that Alice _isn't_ accustomed to, it's this feeling blooming and blossoming in the pit of her stomach, a monstrous, whining flower only grown and nurtured to be cut down and thrown in a vase to gawk at until it withers.

But there's something about these visits of his – the softness of his eyes, the calmness of his touch, the way his eyes flash with something besides hatred and disgust when he looks at her – that she wants to hold onto.

There's something about Jack, foolish and naïve as she may be for wishing it, that she wants to believe in.

"How have you been feeling lately, Alice?" Jack's fingers thread through a lock of her hair, smoothing it out before starting a new braid.

She thinks on this one for a few breaths, weighing the potential answers and crossing out the embarrassing ones, before settling on, "Happy. I've been..."

"Happy," Jack mirrors. He smiles, eyes focused on the braid between his fingers instead of Alice's troubled reflection. When he briefly glances up to meet her eye in the glass, she feels her throat become uncomfortably warm, like having swallowed the ashes collected in a chimney. "I'm glad for that, Alice. To hear that you're happy…that makes me happy as well."

Alice looks down at her hands folded neatly on her lap instead of looking at Jack's face, which is too open and incredible for her to take in all at once. She has to take him in small doses, has to ration herself to his brightness and brilliance, in spite of having begged for another one of his visits just this morning. She's a fool for it, and she acknowledges that plainfaced, but even still, she finds herself turning her head to him slightly as she says, "Why is that?"

"Hm? Why is what?"

Alice closes her eyes as Jack gently combs his fingers through the lock of hair until it's sleek and untangled. It feels nice, being handled by him like this, being pampered in the most modest of ways, and there's a faint tinge of guilt that springs up in her chest when she tilts her head to the left just a fraction of a centimeter, her face just a hair's breadth closer to his hands. There's no accusation in her voice, just forthright curiosity, when she asks, "Why…does me being happy make _you_ happy?"

Jack breathes out a laugh. The sound reminds Alice of rain after a hundred-year drought. "I think the best way to answer that is with a question of my own," he says. "What are we, Alice?"

Alice looks up. Jack's eyes are on her reflection now. "We…?"

"What are you and I to each other? Are we strangers? Are we enemies?" He smiles again, this time with a touch of mourning dressing the edges. "I would certainly hope we're neither one of those things, wouldn't you?"

Alice can't even consider the idea that she could ever hate Jack, or even not be aware of him, and so she counters it with a quick shake of her head and an earnest stare. It can only last a moment or two before she has to look down again, though, and she mentally curses her flimsiness with a rounding of her shoulders and a reddening of her cheeks.

Jack makes a small, thoughtful sound in his throat before continuing, still braiding the endlessness of Alice's hair. "Strangers and enemies…if we were either of those, our own happiness wouldn't affect the other at all, would it? Strangers are indifferent, enemies are bitter...we wouldn't connect as we do now, were we to be such things to each other. We either wouldn't care to or we wouldn't ever dare to."

Alice's eyes are anchored to a single point in space, unoccupied by beauty, unoccupied by Jack.

"What we are, Alice," Jack says, pausing in the middle of braiding, "are friends."

_Friends. _It's a strange word, to be sure, for when Alice tries it out on her own tongue, her stomach tightens in perfect timing with the skipping of her heart. _Friends_, she thinks. _Say it again, Jack. It only sounds right when you say it._

"We care for each other in ways that strangers don't wish to and enemies refuse to. The emotions we have - happiness, sadness, anger - we share them, you and I." Here, he drapes the finished braid over Alice's shoulder and rests his chin gently atop it, still looking at her with that note of grief lingering in the green of his eyes. His hand comes to rest on the crown of Alice's head, a kind gesture, thoughtlessly so, and Alice thinks she has quite readily forgotten how to have coherent thoughts. (He's touching her, he's warm, he's here, Jack, Jack, _Jack…_) "Loneliness, too," he murmurs as an afterthought, soft and barely there.

Something turns over in Alice's heart. It finds the cool side of the pillow in an attempt to calm its fever, but the heat of it is too much, and it reaches its boiling point again within seconds. She bites down hard on her lip to keep herself from saying something that would ruin this peaceful string of seconds forever, something like, _I didn't know what living was like until you came, _or, _You remind me of the sunshine_, or, _I think you're what they call "love". _

"Don't you agree with me," Jack asks, "Alice?"

They would ruin everything, these sentences burning on her tongue.

A shard of sunlight streaks across Jack's face in the mirror, so bright, so perfect, and no, _no_, she can't lose him now, now that her heart has become a warm red balloon drifting up to the ceiling, left to float and stagger in pursuit of the sky.

And so, eyes fixed on her hands clasped on her lap instead of the lambent jewels fixed on her reflection, Alice whispers, "Yes."


End file.
